Microsoft: Once Again, We’re Not Making a Smartphone

On Thursday morning, analysts Rob Sanderson & Mark McKechnie at Broadpoint AmTech added fuel to a rumor floating around for more than a year that Microsoft is preparing to make its own smartphone. In a research report, the analysts say “multiple industry sources” told them Microsoft is preparing to launch such a device in the second half of the year.

The response from a Microsoft spokesman: “Microsoft is not doing a phone.”

This ritual has played out many times over the past year whenever rumors about a Microsoft phone crop up. Although it’s possible Microsoft wants to mislead people about its true mobile plans, or it could change its mind about the issue. But it’s unusual for a company to issue such explicit denials when they could easily decline to comment on the topic.

In an interview recently, Andy Lees, the senior vice president of Microsoft’s mobile communications business, also denied the company is making a phone. Last year, Robbie Bach, the president of the Microsoft division that includes the company’s mobile business, made a similar denial.

And yet the Microsoft phone rumor persists. One reason may be that Microsoft’s mobile phone strategy in the past lost a lot of buzz in the cellular phone world to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android software. Microsoft relies on hardware partners, as it does in the PC business, to make smartphones based on its Windows Mobile operating system. Microsoft is expected to bolster its Windows Mobile strategy with a set of announcements at a conference in Barcelona, Spain.

Another factor contributing to the Microsoft phone rumor is that the company has shown a willingness to ditch its strategy of supplying software to independent device makers in the past in favor of building its own gadget. The company did that with its Zune portable music player, though that product hasn’t sold well.

If Microsoft is secretly plotting to do a phone of its own, despite the company’s denials, the most chagrined will be mobile phone makers who are using Windows Mobile.